Labor Day weekend

I'm in a blogging mood and although I still have much more to catch up on I thought this was a good start. Although it is getting late so let's hope it all makes sense! We had a great Labor Day weekend this year. We started out Saturday by cleaning out the garage, doesn't sound so great, but it REALLY needed to be done. It's not completely organized but it looks 100 times better than it did. Sunday evening we headed to my mom's for my neice, Shelby's, birthday party. We had so much fun just hanging out with my family and Becky's family. We ended up staying the night over there so that mom and I could can some pears the next morning and we could hit the annual Community Day's celebration. We got 14 quarts done and headed to town.

The parade was short and sweet as usual. We were near the end of the parade and Garrett and Lauren were the only kids right there so they got quite the stash of candy. Then we headed to the park for food and visiting with family and friends. The family was camped out closer to the playground this year so the kids were able to enjoy that and we weren't so worried about where they were all the time. Lauren, however, spent most of her time parked right here:

on Grandma's lap. She was my mom's little shadow from the moment we walked in the door on Sunday until we left, and even then she begged for Grandma to come home with us. This girl loves her Grandmas!

They had lots of activities going on and this one was not far from where we sat. Many of my family members (brothers, uncles, cousins) are involved in trying to get a demolition derby going back in town and this was a fund-raiser for that. You could pay $1 to hit the car 2-3 times with a sledge hammer. I don't know how much money they raised but they were busy the whole time we were there! At first Garrett didn't want anything to do with it, but eventually he came and asked me for $1. He hit the car twice before realizing that everyone was watching so I jumped in and helped him with the last shot. He also got to write his name on the car.

We made it home not long before Garrett had his first soccer practice. I stayed home with the girls, but Todd said he did great! Our little boy is overcoming some of his shyness and I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

All in all it was a great weekend spent with family. I came home and canned and dried more pears that week for a total of 16 quarts and 13 pints of canned pears, and about 26 cups of dried pears total! Whew! No more canning for a while.....at least until it's time to do apple pie filling. Yum!